


The Point Being

by RomanticismsNotDead



Category: History Boys - All Media Types
Genre: Friendship, M/M, Posner has a counsellor, Pre-Slash, a tad fluffy, and it's Helping, but probably gen if you want it to be, just a tad, mentioned one-sided Posner/Dakin, talking in libraries
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-08
Updated: 2017-01-08
Packaged: 2018-09-15 18:06:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 960
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9249599
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RomanticismsNotDead/pseuds/RomanticismsNotDead
Summary: Scripps rather likes the rain, as long as he's not in it, and Posner has had a Breakthrough.





	

It was a lovely day in Cambridge. Well, it was a lovely day if you particularly liked rain, because right now there was an awful lot of it everywhere. Scripps rather did like it, although it helped that he was indoors, watching the downpour from a comfortable seat near the library window - in fact, that was probably the whole reason, because Posner, who had just come in and was now trying to untaffle his umbrella from his Walkman headset, looked very much as though he would disagree. Putting a loose sheet of paper in the book he hadn’t been reading anyway so he didn’t lose his page, Scripps wandered over to give him a hand. 

“How do, Pos?” 

“Scrippsy!” Posner exclaimed - then lowered his voice apologetically, remembering that they were in a library. “I didn’t see you there.”

“Unsurprising - rain giving you grief, then?” Scripps replied, taking the umbrella so that Posner was free to untangle the wires.

“How’d you guess?” Posner said, then “Aha!” as the Walkman was freed. “That’ll teach me to try to listen to music in weather like this.”

“It never rains but it pours,” Scripps agreed, taking Posner by the arm so as to lead him to the table.

“It can if it wishes, we’ve no objection. Contrariwise,” Posner quoted absently.

“ _Alice in Wonderland_? That’s a bit pedestrian, isn’t it? You’re slipping, Pos.”

“Literature’s literature,” Posner shrugged. “There’s not one sort that’s inherently more worthy than another.”

“Hector would be so proud,” Scripps said, half-joking.

“I know. I’ve been thinking that a lot lately of stuff I say; I should probably look into that a little more, or else it might become a problem. I may have taken literature slightly too much to heart. Or possibly not; I’m sure he’d despair of my calling it ‘literature’, like some great homogenous lump.”

“Probably - so you’re safe for a while yet, eh?” Scripps ruffled Posner’s hair.

Posner chuckled. “Let’s hope so.”

Hector was like that, with them; everything that had happened was so surreal that the only way they could talk about it was by not talking about it. Hector had been a great teacher, but there was the other stuff that you couldn’t get away from, and aside from that, he’d been desperately lonely. Nobody wanted to be like Hector.

 

Once they were both comfortably seated at the table, books only slightly more damp than they ought to have been, Scripps said:

“So, how was therapy?”

“Counselling,” Posner corrected automatically. Then he brightened. “Not bad, actually - I’ve had a  _revelation_.”

“Oh? Do tell.”

“Well, I’m gay.”

Scripps frowned, wondering if he’d missed something. “Didn’t you have that revelation a while ago?”

“Well, yes,” Posner admitted. “But that’s not the point, the point is - well, look at it this way. For most of my recent existence, I’ve been That Boy Who’s In Love With Dakin. Agreed?”

Scripps nodded, not really feeling much more enlightened. 

“That’s basically been what defined me to most other people for so long that it more or less became how I defined myself, too. I was in love with Dakin, and that was who I was. And I was so busy being the boy who was in love with Dakin that I sort of forgot that there was other stuff I could be, as well. And - well - remember how I used to say I didn’t really want it to pass? Even though any sensible person would wish it would, especially since I was well aware right from the start that I had less than no chance with him?”

“Yes. I always just assumed you weren’t very sensible.”

“Cheers,” Posner said, mock-affrontedly. “Anyway, the reason for that, Colleen thinks, is that I’d become so defined by my love for Dakin that I’d failed to realise that I could be things that weren’t that, that other aspects of myself were equally important. And  _that’s_ why it’s important that I’m gay - that’s not something defined by Dakin, it’s defined by  _me_. I can get over him, I can fall in love with someone else, or it can just  _not matter_. Because it’s boys in general, not necessarily Dakin in the specific.”

“ _Intent on one great love, requited and forever,_ ” Scripps quoted, “ _I missed love’s everywhere small presence, thousand-guised_.”

Posner nodded enthusiastically. “Yes, exactly! And I  _know_  it seems silly to have needed someone else to point that out, but that’s what counselling’s there for, at least for me. Telling you things that you don’t know, but everyone else would assume you did because it would be really,  _really_  stupid not to.” 

Scripps thought about this. “I don’t think you’re silly,” he said, eventually. “I think everyone’s a bit like that - sometimes you need someone to point out something that should be blindingly obvious, just because you’re too close to the problem to be able to see it. Wood for the trees sort of thing.”

Abruptly, Posner stood up and came round to Scripps’ side of the table.

“What?”

“I can’t hug you from across a table, there’s stuff in the way. Now get up, it’ll make life easier.” And with that, Posner pulled Scripps to his feet and wrapped his arms around him.

After a while, Scripps said, “Not that this isn’t very nice, but is there any particular reason for it?”

“You understood,” Posner said simply. “Thanks.”

“…No problem.”

Posner pulled back and grinned radiantly up at him. “Oh, Scrippsy. What did I ever do to deserve a friend like you?”

Scripps was coming dangerously close to saying something that might reasonably have been considered a bit much, so he opted for a joke instead. “Must be the incredibly sensible way you handle your love life.” 

“Fuck off,” Posner responded fondly.

And that was that.


End file.
